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Sexual Utopia in Power
Like many political revolutions, the sexual revolution of the 1960s began with a euphoric feeling of liberation. But when utopian programs clash with dissenters--and with reality itself--the result is chaos, which revolutionaries seek to quash with repression and terror. In Sexual Utopia in Power, F. Roger Devlin explores today's sexual dystopia, with its loose morals and confused sexual roles; its soaring rates of divorce, celibacy, and childlessness; and the increasingly arbitrary and punitive attempts to regulate and police it. Devlin shows that the breakdown of monogamy results in promiscuity for the few, loneliness for the majority, and unhappiness for all.
Every revolution gives rise to a reaction. Devlin, however, is very critical of mainstream conservative responses to the sexual revolution, which often eerily echo feminist complaints about innocent women being preyed upon by wicked men who must be scolded and punished. The most controversial aspect of Devlin's work is his argument that today's sexual dystopia is rooted just as much in women's nature as men's, exploring such taboo topics as female hypergamy (mating up), narcissism, infidelity, deceptiveness, and masochism. By showing their biological basis, F. Roger Devlin offers a non-traditional defense of traditional sexual morals and institutions and shows us the way out of today's sexual dystopia.
Every revolution gives rise to a reaction. Devlin, however, is very critical of mainstream conservative responses to the sexual revolution, which often eerily echo feminist complaints about innocent women being preyed upon by wicked men who must be scolded and punished. The most controversial aspect of Devlin's work is his argument that today's sexual dystopia is rooted just as much in women's nature as men's, exploring such taboo topics as female hypergamy (mating up), narcissism, infidelity, deceptiveness, and masochism. By showing their biological basis, F. Roger Devlin offers a non-traditional defense of traditional sexual morals and institutions and shows us the way out of today's sexual dystopia.
- GenresHistory
192 pages, Paperback
Published November 24, 2020
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February 6, 2026
Devlin is a bit dark, but in no way can you say he is wrong. This is essential reading for feminists and men alike.
The vast amount has been written about women, positive and negative. Since the feminists grabbed the microphone in the 1960s we have been deluded with the positive. F Roger Devlin does mankind the service of pointing out the negative.
None of his points are deniable, but taken together they are extremely depressing. Man, the logical party within a marriage, should be convinced not to go into the undertaking. To avoid women altogether. Yet, if we do that, the species will die out.
The Internet reveals nothing of F Roger Devlin's personal life. I could not find a photograph, a date of birth, or any publications prior to 2008. His own writing, and certainly his style and erudition indicate that he was a university professor before that time. Where and how long we have no idea. This book is a collection of seven essays written over the years since about 2008, the first of which gave the work its title.
Let me summarize his thesis in a few sentences:
• Women do not know what they want. They never have.
• They observed that men seem to be reasonably happy, and decide that they wanted what men had.
• Men had earned what they possessed and were comfortable in the possession. Women could not hold or be satisfied with what they extorted from men.
• Women persist in the notion that men are to blame for their own lack of satisfaction.
This summarizes a number of themes that run through Devlin's work. The level of female acrimony they have aroused is some measure of their acuity.
The "sexual utopia" thesis is a response to the feminist notion that "the evil patriarchy" had suppressed women's sexuality. A feminist leitmotif has been that women's libidos are just as strong as those of men and that sexual fulfillment could be found once the male–imposed restraints were removed.
The program was implemented via a great number of social and legal changes that took place with the sexual revolution. Chastity for women was devalued, down to the supposed level of that of men. The hookup culture ensued. Divorce was made easier. More than that, the divorce laws were written to strongly favor women. Feminists created the "rape culture" meme from whole cloth. There never had been a rape epidemic and certainly with the advent of more widely available sex there was even less of one in the 1960s.
Devlin quotes Katie Roiphe's "The Morning After" as a sane, balanced look at what the "Take Back the Night" movement and sexual permissiveness gave rise to at Harvard. I add that Roiphe's life after Harvard is testimony to the damage that feminism does. She was reviled by the feminists for telling the truth. She has gone on to publish a couple of other, less well noted works in the two decades since. She exited her years of fertility not married, with no kids, and not exuding any notable happiness. She is the poster child of Generation X femininity.
Hypergamy is a theme to which Devlin returns repeatedly. Women used to be constrained in their choice of mates in several ways. First of all, before the age of media, their notion of the gamut of available men was framed in their own parochial setting, usually a small town. Before the movies, women didn't know that a creature like Cary Grant even existed.
Women used to be constrained by an expectation of marriage. Knowing that young girls don't have mature judgment, grandmothers would counsel them about marriage prospects. The guy had to show promise of being a dependable spouse and a good provider. There wasn't much thought of a thrilling sexual partner or matinee idol looks.
Women were further constrained by the expectation of monogamy and fidelity. Things did not go well for adulteresses. Women largely avoided temptation.
The result was that average women married average guys. Now, Devlin asserts, hypergamy has taken over. Average women want to mate with alpha males. They avoid men who are just as average as they are. Alpha males are content with the bargain – a man will take what he can get. The result is that a few men seem to get all the sex they want, whereas the humdrum majority who would have found a wife one way or another in prior ages seem to get none at all.
And, Devlin repeatedly asserts, women with their eyes set on an alpha male constantly complain that there are no good men available, or that all of the good men refuse to commit. At the same time the women are rejecting perfectly marriageable guys and accusing them of harassment and stalking simply for trying to get a date. The women's refusal to see the world as it is, and men's complicity in this refusal, has led to chaos in the mating scene. Nobody seems to be happy except the alpha males, and they are blasé.
Rotating polyandry and its enforcers.
Devlin's jumping off point consists of two books: Women’s Infidelity: Living In Limbo and Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood.
The female author of the book on women's infidelity addresses the question of how often women cheat and why they cheat. Fundamentally, they get bored. The supposed cycle is four years. The honeymoon is over, the guy is inadequate because (1) he is spending all of his time at work and doesn't pay enough attention to her, or (2) he is not making enough money. In any case, it's all his fault. Women's expectations are unrealistically high, and since the sexual revolution the societal constraints that might have kept her bound to her marital vows have relaxed.
The war against fatherhood stresses the ways in which family courts, which do not operate under the same set of laws as criminal courts but still have the authority to fine and jail men, have destroyed the family. Women can break up a marriage, take the kids, blame the husband for vile crimes such as incest and ensure that he is bankrupt, unemployable, and will never see his kids.
Meanwhile, the philandering wife is free to entice another victim into her embrace. I have overdrawn Devlin's point just a bit for affect, but this is a strong essay.
The Female Sexual Counterrevolution
In this essay Devlin examines a book by author Wendy Shalit: Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect And Find It Not Bad To Be Good. Devlin agrees with her on many points, disagrees on others, and is quick to say "just like a woman" in other instances.
He agrees with the premise that feminine virtue and modesty are essential to society. Without it society is deprived of its two most important contributors – men who work hard, invent things, and get respect from society, and women who raise the next generation. The two have to be able to trust each other. Feminine self-respect is at the core.
Shalit argues that women should remain celibate until marriage. Devlin counters that in the modern world, doing so would condemn a great many of them to spinsterhood. He encourages honesty and realism on the part of both partners.
Home economics
The word economy comes from the Latin term for a household. Men bring in the income and women bear and raise children and manage the household budget – do the shopping, decide what needs to be bought or fixed, and so on.
Devlin's point is that women cannot by and large manage a household and a job simultaneously. Something has to give. The children often suffer from a want of attention. They are put in the care of in different daycare providers. Parents do not spend the time that would be required to properly civilize them – teach them manners, and most important, teach them how to get along with other people. The children do not see much evidence of what it means to work together in a marital partnership.
But as feminism achieved equality in some areas, women stopped contributing to society in other areas. Tragically, those are areas that are essential to the perpetuation of a culture. On the other hand, the additional money that they earn seems to go to things that are merely nice to have. In fact, most of the extra money winds up being discretionary money for the woman. He quotes "What you earn is ours, what I earn is mine."
The Family Way
This is a review, almost entirely favorable, of a book by Allan C. Carlson entitled Third Ways: How Bulgarian Greens, Swedish Housewives, And Beer-Swilling Englishmen Created Family-Centered Economies—And Why They Disappeared.
The theme is that if a family sees itself as a family and sees the family interests as paramount, they will find that they don't need a vast amount of income. The family is better off dedicating itself to the most important task, that of raising children.
The article contains an interesting history of the social and Christian Democratic parties of Europe, and their stand on family issues. He takes the generous swipe at Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, the socialist power couple of the 30s and 40s in Sweden. Note that Gunnar was the author of the pernicious "An American Dilemma" that inspired a generation of wishful thinking about race relations in the United States and a spate of social policy that has turned out to be utopian, unworkable, and ultimately counterproductive.
Back to Africa: Sexual Atavism in the Modern West
Sexual patterns in the United States are reverting to those of West Africa, where most of the ancestors of Afro-Americans came from. Women are able to grow enough crops with their primitive garden plots to support everybody. The men sit around enjoying braggadocio and beer. Mothers foster their children to other families to raise. Since education is not a priority – there is nothing to do if you acquire one, and a dearth of ability in the first place – mothers are not terribly concerned at what happens to their kids. The system of fostering provides minimal income to the foster parents and gives the mother the freedom to become pregnant again in short order.
The Question of Female Masochism
An investigation of the "ladies love outlaws" meme. Whatever they may say about wanting a tender, caring, reliable man, evidence goes the other way. Women often fall in love with men who treat them terribly. Devlin refers again to Cary Grant. In his first few movies he played a cad, a bounder who mistreated and misled women, opposite a standup guy who took good care of them. The studios figured out that it was Grant who was drawing the ladies into the theaters. They gave them what they wanted – more of the bad boy.
Conclusion
These essays offer many variations on the same themes. Every male reader will identify with a great many of his points. He describes in many ways my ex-wife and two daughters, both of whom have been signally unable to form stable relationships and will never give me grandchildren. On the other hand, I have neither experienced nor observed many of the evils he describes.
His bottom line point is that American society, and in fact Western European society in general, has degenerated to the point that they are unable to perpetuate themselves. Women simply do not fulfill their historical, their essential role of bearing and raising the succeeding generations to carry on a culture. The women who do have children tend to be the less intelligent and the culture that they perpetuate incorporates by and large the worst aspects of contemporary society.
Each of the seven essays is worth reading and considering. The situation may not be as dark as Devlin would make it appear, but it is absolutely essential to have some counterpoint to the feminist propaganda that dominates this age. Five stars.
The vast amount has been written about women, positive and negative. Since the feminists grabbed the microphone in the 1960s we have been deluded with the positive. F Roger Devlin does mankind the service of pointing out the negative.
None of his points are deniable, but taken together they are extremely depressing. Man, the logical party within a marriage, should be convinced not to go into the undertaking. To avoid women altogether. Yet, if we do that, the species will die out.
The Internet reveals nothing of F Roger Devlin's personal life. I could not find a photograph, a date of birth, or any publications prior to 2008. His own writing, and certainly his style and erudition indicate that he was a university professor before that time. Where and how long we have no idea. This book is a collection of seven essays written over the years since about 2008, the first of which gave the work its title.
Let me summarize his thesis in a few sentences:
• Women do not know what they want. They never have.
• They observed that men seem to be reasonably happy, and decide that they wanted what men had.
• Men had earned what they possessed and were comfortable in the possession. Women could not hold or be satisfied with what they extorted from men.
• Women persist in the notion that men are to blame for their own lack of satisfaction.
This summarizes a number of themes that run through Devlin's work. The level of female acrimony they have aroused is some measure of their acuity.
The "sexual utopia" thesis is a response to the feminist notion that "the evil patriarchy" had suppressed women's sexuality. A feminist leitmotif has been that women's libidos are just as strong as those of men and that sexual fulfillment could be found once the male–imposed restraints were removed.
The program was implemented via a great number of social and legal changes that took place with the sexual revolution. Chastity for women was devalued, down to the supposed level of that of men. The hookup culture ensued. Divorce was made easier. More than that, the divorce laws were written to strongly favor women. Feminists created the "rape culture" meme from whole cloth. There never had been a rape epidemic and certainly with the advent of more widely available sex there was even less of one in the 1960s.
Devlin quotes Katie Roiphe's "The Morning After" as a sane, balanced look at what the "Take Back the Night" movement and sexual permissiveness gave rise to at Harvard. I add that Roiphe's life after Harvard is testimony to the damage that feminism does. She was reviled by the feminists for telling the truth. She has gone on to publish a couple of other, less well noted works in the two decades since. She exited her years of fertility not married, with no kids, and not exuding any notable happiness. She is the poster child of Generation X femininity.
Hypergamy is a theme to which Devlin returns repeatedly. Women used to be constrained in their choice of mates in several ways. First of all, before the age of media, their notion of the gamut of available men was framed in their own parochial setting, usually a small town. Before the movies, women didn't know that a creature like Cary Grant even existed.
Women used to be constrained by an expectation of marriage. Knowing that young girls don't have mature judgment, grandmothers would counsel them about marriage prospects. The guy had to show promise of being a dependable spouse and a good provider. There wasn't much thought of a thrilling sexual partner or matinee idol looks.
Women were further constrained by the expectation of monogamy and fidelity. Things did not go well for adulteresses. Women largely avoided temptation.
The result was that average women married average guys. Now, Devlin asserts, hypergamy has taken over. Average women want to mate with alpha males. They avoid men who are just as average as they are. Alpha males are content with the bargain – a man will take what he can get. The result is that a few men seem to get all the sex they want, whereas the humdrum majority who would have found a wife one way or another in prior ages seem to get none at all.
And, Devlin repeatedly asserts, women with their eyes set on an alpha male constantly complain that there are no good men available, or that all of the good men refuse to commit. At the same time the women are rejecting perfectly marriageable guys and accusing them of harassment and stalking simply for trying to get a date. The women's refusal to see the world as it is, and men's complicity in this refusal, has led to chaos in the mating scene. Nobody seems to be happy except the alpha males, and they are blasé.
Rotating polyandry and its enforcers.
Devlin's jumping off point consists of two books: Women’s Infidelity: Living In Limbo and Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood.
The female author of the book on women's infidelity addresses the question of how often women cheat and why they cheat. Fundamentally, they get bored. The supposed cycle is four years. The honeymoon is over, the guy is inadequate because (1) he is spending all of his time at work and doesn't pay enough attention to her, or (2) he is not making enough money. In any case, it's all his fault. Women's expectations are unrealistically high, and since the sexual revolution the societal constraints that might have kept her bound to her marital vows have relaxed.
The war against fatherhood stresses the ways in which family courts, which do not operate under the same set of laws as criminal courts but still have the authority to fine and jail men, have destroyed the family. Women can break up a marriage, take the kids, blame the husband for vile crimes such as incest and ensure that he is bankrupt, unemployable, and will never see his kids.
Meanwhile, the philandering wife is free to entice another victim into her embrace. I have overdrawn Devlin's point just a bit for affect, but this is a strong essay.
The Female Sexual Counterrevolution
In this essay Devlin examines a book by author Wendy Shalit: Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect And Find It Not Bad To Be Good. Devlin agrees with her on many points, disagrees on others, and is quick to say "just like a woman" in other instances.
He agrees with the premise that feminine virtue and modesty are essential to society. Without it society is deprived of its two most important contributors – men who work hard, invent things, and get respect from society, and women who raise the next generation. The two have to be able to trust each other. Feminine self-respect is at the core.
Shalit argues that women should remain celibate until marriage. Devlin counters that in the modern world, doing so would condemn a great many of them to spinsterhood. He encourages honesty and realism on the part of both partners.
Home economics
The word economy comes from the Latin term for a household. Men bring in the income and women bear and raise children and manage the household budget – do the shopping, decide what needs to be bought or fixed, and so on.
Devlin's point is that women cannot by and large manage a household and a job simultaneously. Something has to give. The children often suffer from a want of attention. They are put in the care of in different daycare providers. Parents do not spend the time that would be required to properly civilize them – teach them manners, and most important, teach them how to get along with other people. The children do not see much evidence of what it means to work together in a marital partnership.
But as feminism achieved equality in some areas, women stopped contributing to society in other areas. Tragically, those are areas that are essential to the perpetuation of a culture. On the other hand, the additional money that they earn seems to go to things that are merely nice to have. In fact, most of the extra money winds up being discretionary money for the woman. He quotes "What you earn is ours, what I earn is mine."
The Family Way
This is a review, almost entirely favorable, of a book by Allan C. Carlson entitled Third Ways: How Bulgarian Greens, Swedish Housewives, And Beer-Swilling Englishmen Created Family-Centered Economies—And Why They Disappeared.
The theme is that if a family sees itself as a family and sees the family interests as paramount, they will find that they don't need a vast amount of income. The family is better off dedicating itself to the most important task, that of raising children.
The article contains an interesting history of the social and Christian Democratic parties of Europe, and their stand on family issues. He takes the generous swipe at Gunnar and Alva Myrdal, the socialist power couple of the 30s and 40s in Sweden. Note that Gunnar was the author of the pernicious "An American Dilemma" that inspired a generation of wishful thinking about race relations in the United States and a spate of social policy that has turned out to be utopian, unworkable, and ultimately counterproductive.
Back to Africa: Sexual Atavism in the Modern West
Sexual patterns in the United States are reverting to those of West Africa, where most of the ancestors of Afro-Americans came from. Women are able to grow enough crops with their primitive garden plots to support everybody. The men sit around enjoying braggadocio and beer. Mothers foster their children to other families to raise. Since education is not a priority – there is nothing to do if you acquire one, and a dearth of ability in the first place – mothers are not terribly concerned at what happens to their kids. The system of fostering provides minimal income to the foster parents and gives the mother the freedom to become pregnant again in short order.
The Question of Female Masochism
An investigation of the "ladies love outlaws" meme. Whatever they may say about wanting a tender, caring, reliable man, evidence goes the other way. Women often fall in love with men who treat them terribly. Devlin refers again to Cary Grant. In his first few movies he played a cad, a bounder who mistreated and misled women, opposite a standup guy who took good care of them. The studios figured out that it was Grant who was drawing the ladies into the theaters. They gave them what they wanted – more of the bad boy.
Conclusion
These essays offer many variations on the same themes. Every male reader will identify with a great many of his points. He describes in many ways my ex-wife and two daughters, both of whom have been signally unable to form stable relationships and will never give me grandchildren. On the other hand, I have neither experienced nor observed many of the evils he describes.
His bottom line point is that American society, and in fact Western European society in general, has degenerated to the point that they are unable to perpetuate themselves. Women simply do not fulfill their historical, their essential role of bearing and raising the succeeding generations to carry on a culture. The women who do have children tend to be the less intelligent and the culture that they perpetuate incorporates by and large the worst aspects of contemporary society.
Each of the seven essays is worth reading and considering. The situation may not be as dark as Devlin would make it appear, but it is absolutely essential to have some counterpoint to the feminist propaganda that dominates this age. Five stars.
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